Allie Trimm as Hannah Campbell and Telly Leung as Sammy Kimura in the world premiere of "Allegiance — A New American Musical," with music and lyrics by Jay Kuo and book by Marc Acito, Kuo and Lorenzo Thione, directed by Stafford Arima.Henry DiRocco

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Allie Trimm as Hannah Campbell and Telly Leung as Sammy Kimura in the world premiere of "Allegiance — A New American Musical," with music and lyrics by Jay Kuo and book by Marc Acito, Kuo and Lorenzo Thione, directed by Stafford Arima.

It’s Sept. 28, nine days after the much-anticipated opening night of “Allegiance — A New American Musical,” and the 32-year-old actor is finally feeling better after a two-day, doctor-imposed vocal rest. It’s been 2½ years since he first sat down for a reading in New York City, and the last thing Leung wanted was to be sidelined.

Not now.

“Rarely have I been a part of a theatrical experience where we get this kind of audience reaction,” Leung says of the Old Globe Theatre’s world-premiere musical, whose run has been extended another week to Oct. 28. “The minute the curtain falls at the end of our show, these audiences are leaping to their feet. I hope it’s because the story that we’ve just told for the last 2½ hours is something that really, really moves them, and that they’ve felt that they’ve been changed coming to the theater.”

The story is not an easy one to tell: Set in an internment camp, “Allegiance” is a fictionalized tale of one family’s struggle as a result of Executive Order 9066, the measure signed in 1942 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that authorized sending Japanese-Americans to “relocation” camps.

However difficult, however dark, it’s a story that needs to be told, and Leung feels compelled to help tell it.

“How do we take such a dark part of our history … that we as Americans don’t like to talk about because we are ashamed that we actually egregiously did this to our own citizens,” he says. “I think it’s always been a challenge of how do we find the other colors of this story because, yes, it is a dark chapter in our American history, but how do we find the moments of hope. …

“In developing the show in the last 2½ years … that’s always been a challenge — how do we show all colors of this experience and all points of view to be fair to everyone so that it’s not just about something sad, which it is. But I think a reason why audiences leap to their feet is because they feel a sense of hope at the end of the show.”

American dreams

For Leung, the path that got him here almost never was.

Born in New York City, Leung is the only child of Chinese immigrants who left their homeland with the goal of living the American dream.

“They had high aspirations for me to go to some Ivy League school and become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer,” Leung says. “They were blue-collar immigrant parents. My dad worked in the restaurants, and my mom worked in garment factories. So they understood how hard it was to earn a living and save. I’m an only kid, and maybe they would have had more kids if they could afford it, but they couldn’t. They gave me everything they could. And I think they said, ‘Gosh, we wish we could have given Telly even more. And how great would it be if money weren’t an issue.’ … Financial success was their idea of success.

“I remember when I was 8 years old, and we were on some family vacation to Boston, and my dad stood with me at the gates of Harvard and said: ‘I want you to go to Harvard one day. Study hard, go to Harvard. Don’t do restaurant business like your dad.’ ”

College may have been in his future, but for Leung, the road to a degree veered away from the Ivy League and instead toward Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He wanted to be an actor, and the university had a stellar drama school.

That was not a part of his parents’ plan.

“They were pretty strict with me as a kid,” Leung recalls. “They had me do my homework and practice piano, and I couldn’t watch junk TV, as my parents would call it. Junk cartoons. They would say, ‘only watch PBS.’ I only watched ‘Sesame Street’ and ‘Nova’ and ‘Square One’ — television shows that were educational. A lot of nature programs and science programs, right? Well, lo and behold, ‘Great Performances’ comes on and they’re showing the telecast of the Broadway production of ‘Into the Woods,’ which actually started at the Globe.

“At 8 years old, I was hooked. So their plan to have me only watch PBS and that Tiger Mom mentality of only studying and being very strict with me actually backfired,” says Leung, who has appeared in several TV shows, including “Glee,” and many Broadway productions, including “Rent,” “Wicked,” “Godspell” and “Flower Drum Song.” Besides acting, he also has a new album (“I’ll Cover You”) due out later this year and a one-man show at the Diversionary Theatre on Monday (it’s sold out) and at The Coterie in Los Angeles on Nov. 9-10.

Culture clash

The parallel between his own old-world-versus-new-world struggles and those of his “Allegiance” character Sammy is not lost on Leung.

“As an actor, the way I got into Sam … the thing that I really understood is this duality of being Asian-American. They’re both capitalized for a reason because you’re equally both. I’m second-generation, and on the show, there is a clear divide between the Issei (first generation from Japan) and Nisei (second generation and born in the U.S.). My parents are, in many ways, Issei. They immigrated to America, and they brought with them their values and their culture from China and their expectations of what a good Chinese son were. Well, then here I was born in America, and I have very different ideas of what it is to grow up in America. And sometimes, those things were oil and water, and they don’t mix.”

In the play, Sammy has dreams. Very American dreams. He wants to be class president and go to UCLA, and “then all of a sudden Dec. 7 happens, and all of those dreams that he has, he can’t accomplish … solely based on the color of his skin and his heritage.

“I think America has always been the land of possibilities. Well, for that period of time, those three or four years that people were interned, possibility was taken away from those people.”

As a second-generation Chinese-American, born in 1980, Leung admits that his reality very much differs from the reality of his parents or that of the character he portrays in “Allegiance.” But as a Chinese-American, he knows, too, that his world is not like that of many Americans.

“People ask me all the time, ‘Do you feel limited by your race in this business?’ And I go, ‘Well, certainly there are times that I feel that way, but I can never let that stop me from trying to achieve what I want to achieve.’ … I live in a world of possibility … and I think Sammy is very much that way, too.”

A universal story

His parents recently traveled to San Diego to watch their only son act in a world-premiere musical.

“Ten Chinese people in the front row (of the balcony level),” he says. “My parents brought eight uncles and aunties, most of whom did not speak English. After the show, I said, ‘Ma, were they OK? Did they understand the story?’ She said, ‘Yes, they got it.’

“There’s something in this story that is very universal,” Leung adds. “Even though my eight Chinese aunties and uncles did not speak English, they got it. They got what the story’s about. They got the family dynamic of this conflict. … They got that Sammy, like most kids, just wants his dad to say ‘I’m proud of you,’ and Dad never says it. They got what it’s like being in love and having your parents disapprove of the person that you love. I think even though they didn’t understand every word, they got the story. And I think the universality of the show is really palpable.”

For Leung, there are many more nights ahead portraying Sammy, but that one evening, that one particular performance in September when his parents sat in the audience, is something he’ll never forget.